What had this wretched Lyce done that Horace should have prayed the gods to strip her of her charms, and to degrade her from a haughty beauty into a maudlin hag, disgusting and ridiculous? Why cast such very merciless stones at one who, by his own avowal, had erewhile witched his very soul from him? Why rejoice to see this once beautiful creature the scoff of all the heartless young fops of Rome? If she had injured him, what of that? Was it so very strange that a woman trained, like all the class to which she belonged, to be the plaything of man's caprice, should have been fickle, mercenary, or even heartless? Poor Lyce might at least have claimed his silence, if he could not do, what Thackeray says every honest fellow should do, "think well of the woman he has once thought well of, and remember her with kindness and tenderness, as a man remembers a place where he has been very happy."
Horace's better self comes out in his playful appeal to his friend Xanthias (Odes, II. 4) not to be ashamed of having fallen in love with his handmaiden Phyllis. That she is a slave is a matter of no account. A girl of such admirable qualities must surely come of a good stock, and is well worth any man's love. Did not Achilles succumb to Briseis, Ajax to Tecmessa, Agamemnon himself to Cassandra? Moreover,
"For aught that you know, the fair Phyllis may be The shoot of some highly respectable stem; Nay, she counts, never doubt it, some kings in her tree, And laments the lost acres once lorded by them. Never think that a creature so exquisite grew In the haunts where but vice and dishonour are known, Nor deem that a girl so unselfish, so true, Had a mother 'twould shame thee to take for thine own."
Here we have the true Horace; and after all these fascinating but doubtful Lydés, Neaeras, and Pyrrhas, it is pleasant to come across a young beauty like this Phyllis, _sic fidelem, sic lucro aversam_. She, at least, is a fresh and fragrant violet among the languorous hothouse splendours of the Horatian garden.
Domestic love, which plays so large a part in modern poetry, is a theme rarely touched on in Roman verse. Hence we know but little of the Romans in their homes--for such a topic used to be thought beneath the dignity of history--and especially little of the women, who presided over what have been called "the tender and temperate honours of the hearth." The ladies who flourish in the poetry and also in the history of those times, however conspicuous for beauty or attraction, are not generally of the kind that make home happy. Such matrons as we chiefly read of there would in the present day he apt to figure in the divorce court. Nor is the explanation of this difficult. The prevalence of marriage for mere wealth or connection, and the facility of divorce, which made the marriage-tie almost a farce among the upper classes, had resulted, as it could not fail to do, in a great debasement of morals. A lady did not lose caste either by being divorced, or by seeking divorce, from husband after husband. And as wives in the higher ranks often held the purse-strings, they made themselves pretty frequently more dreaded than beloved by their lords, through being tyrannical, if not unchaste, or both. So at least Horace plainly indicates (Odes, III. 24), when contrasting the vices of Rome with the simpler virtues of some of the nations that were under its sway. In those happier lands, he says, "_Nec dotata regit virum conjux, nec nitido fidit adultero_"--